A commonsense ,easy to understand review of our current economic and political mess with proposed solutions.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR SCHOOLS?

I attended public school in a big midwest city and feel I received a wonderful,first rate education and was well prepared for college.I had first rate teachers who were enthusiastic, creative,dedicated and really cared about us. They were severely underpaid then as they are now.They shaped my future and next to parents are the most important influence one could have.We need good teachers as much today as they prepare our kids for the future.
We have the best universities in the world yet our public schools are failing.Why is that? I dont know for sure but have a strong suspicion that government has something to do with it. I looked at the Department of Education web site and budget and it is very vague and loaded with programs that cost billions for such programs as "increase awareness of ....." What is it and why does it cost so much? I have a feeling that the more programs and more spending that the Dept. of Ed has, the poorer results we get. The Dept. does administer grants and scholarships which no doubt have good results but one must question their overall contribution to public education.
Schools are administered at the state and local levels.We have a federal dept ,a state dept and the local dept.I bet there is a lot of duplication,waste and make work policies that create overhead and do little to improve education.I have seen several news reports of special programs where individual schools were improved dramatically.We should learn from this and apply it all over.The first thing these programs did was change almost everything ,especially the administration . This is not an expensive program, just a change in the way of doing business. This is what we need nationally.It is no longer business as usual.We need a complete change, not more money.